Last Things by Jenny Offill

Last Things is a skilful dance between child and adult worlds, as Offill steps from playfulness to poignancy, cruelty to kindness, wonder to piercing disappointment.
-Guardian

Synopsis

Grace's father believes in science and builds his daughter a dollhouse with lights that really work. Grace's mother takes her skinny-dipping in the lake and teaches her about African hyena men who devour their wives in their sleep. Grace's world, of fact and fiction, marvels and madness, is slowly unraveling because her family is coming apart before her eyes. Now eight-year-old Grace must choose between her two very different, very flawed parents, a choice that will take her on a dizzying journey, away from her home in Vermont to the boozy, flooded streets of New Orleans--and into the equally wondrous and frightening realm of her own imagination.With eloquence and compassion, Jenny Offill weaves a luminous story of a wounded family and of a young girl yearning to understand the difference between fiction, fact, and hope. A novel of vibrant imagination and searing intelligence, Last Things is a stunning literary achievement.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL is the author of the "Use Me," a contributing editor to "Vanity Fair," and a cofounder of "Tin House," JENNY OFFILL is the author of "Last Things" and teaches in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College and Queens University. They are the coeditors of the anthology "The Friend Who Got Away,